


our folklore

by danceinmystorm



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, College, F/M, High School, Ode to Taylor Swift, Slow Burn, and after
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25809865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceinmystorm/pseuds/danceinmystorm
Summary: Rey Niima doesn't realize that the first night she lets Ben Solo drive her home from work is the start of their long love story.chapter one: for me, it was enough (august)chapter two: in my defense, i have none (the 1)chapter three: a sting that pulled me (invisible string)A Reylo story told through Taylor Swift's folklore
Relationships: Brief Ben Solo/Bazine Netal, Brief Rey/OC characters, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 14
Kudos: 41





	1. for me, it was enough

_But I can see us lost in the memory_

_August slipped away into a moment in time_

_‘Cause it was never mine_

_And I can see us twisted in bedsheets_

_August sipped away like a bottle of wine_

_‘Cause you were never mine_

_\- august _ taylor swift_

  
✨✨

The first time Rey saw Ben Solo during the summer between their junior and senior years, it was with his big group of friends. They all came barreling toward the concession stand where Rey worked most weeknights, armed with their tickets for the new _Star Wars_ movie, ready to spend ridiculous amounts of money on popcorn and soda they could’ve easily smuggled in with the girls’ big purses.

Regardless, Rey serves them all in their pairs, dates, she presumes, and bids them an “enjoy your movie” without much energy. She isn’t surprised when none of them acknowledged her; she’d only been in their classes for the past five years since she got moved to the Chandrila district by social services so why would they recognize the three-bun girl whose name was literally tagged on her shirt?

Rey was ready to clean up the mess she left behind while serving the big group when one more person came up, a smirk on his face.

“Hi, what can I get you?” Rey says with as much fake enthusiasm as she could.

“Your number,” the boy jokes. Rey glanced around behind him and heard the snickering of his group.

“Not on the menu,” Rey replies with glaring eyes.

“Oh, come on,” the boy, Snap, she finally remembered, laughs. “Maybe next time you could come and watch the movie with me.”

“Not my fault you can’t get your own date, Snap.”

A chorus of “ _ooooohs”_ comes over the group and Snap looked around embarrassedly. Turning back to Rey, he narrowed his eyes. “Look, junk rat, you can’t talk to me like—”

“Hey, back off.”

Suddenly, Snap was being pushed away from the concession stand by firm hands. The deep voice silenced the small crowd still in the lobby holding their drinks and popcorn.

“Just take the L and go Snap.” Rey looks up at Ben Solo, her rescuer, as he ushers everyone away. When everyone finally went toward the ticket taker to go to the auditorium, Ben finally looked over at her.

Rey tried not to let her nervousness show. Her heart started hammering in her chest. She’d never been this close to the star baseball player before. They’d never talked before, even though they shared the same advanced classes. Rey was sure he didn’t know she existed, just like all of his other friends.

“Sorry about him,” he finally said. “His girlfriend just broke up with him. I think the girlfriend was actually imaginary.”

“So is his game,” Rey mutters under her breath. When Ben laughed, she looked up with red cheeks. She hadn’t meant for him to hear that.

“Anyways,” she says quickly. “What can I get you?”

“Large popcorn,” he tells her. “Extra butter. My girlfriend will kill me if I don’t ask for it.”

Rey nods and turns around to grab the large container. She lets her face fall when she starts to scoop popcorn into the plastic tub. Of course she knew that Ben Solo had a girlfriend, the same one since they started high school. For a second she thought that maybe, just maybe, they had broken up since Bazine wasn’t with the group. Not that it would’ve mattered since Rey would trick herself into thinking she could have a shot with _the_ Ben Solo.

She hands him the extra buttered popcorn once done. “Do you want a drink too?”

He looks at the menu. “One of those blue raspberry ICEEs actually. Large. I haven’t had one in years.”

“That’s a shame.” She grabs one of the large cups, attaches a dome lid, and fills the cup. Feeling bold, she tries to continue the conversation. “Why is that?”

“Hmm?” Ben looks up from his phone. “Oh. I try not to have a lot of sugar. Trying to keep fit and all that for baseball.”

“Right. Gotta save the sugar intake for all that bubblegum.”

He gives her a strange look. She looks down embarrassed. “You know. Baseball player are always chewing bubblegum. The dugout always has those big tubs of them.”

“You watch baseball?” he asks curiously.

“Uh, my foster dad does,” Rey admits. “He roots for the Cardinals. So I quietly root for Cincinnati.”

Another genuine laugh comes out of Ben and Rey dies a little inside.

“It’s a good team to root for,” he finally says. “Oldest team in baseball.”

“Haven’t been to the World Series since the 90’s though.” Rey thinks she’s wiped the same spot on the counter ten times in this whole conversation.

Before Ben could answer, a pair of arms wrap around him from behind, surprising both him and Rey. The manicured fingers find their way to the dark, wavy hair atop his head and Rey turns around to…restock the candy shelf.

Rey ignores the small conversation and sounds of kissing over the counter. She loses track of how much time passes when she finally notices a 20 dollar bill sliding over the counter.

“Keep the rest,” Ben says as he grabs the popcorn and drink from the counter.

“We…we don’t accept tips,” she stutters as she quickly tries to get him his change.

“I won’t tell if you won’t.” The wink he flashes her before walking away is enough to keep Rey silent for the rest of the slow night.

Once the theater is closed and the concession stand is clean, Rey clocks out and makes her way to the bike she has stashed at the loading dock. When she’s rolling her bike out into the night, she notices Ben’s big group of friends exiting from their own movie, all talking animatedly about the crazy ending that Rey still hadn’t seen. She does her best to hide behind the bushes to avoid calling attention to herself. She’d hit her social interaction quota well before that group even came in to the theater.

When she thinks that all of the cars have left the parking lot she finally gets on her bike to drive towards the junk yard that she calls her home. As she turns behind the theater she notices a stray car left with someone sitting on its hood. The person’s head comes up at the sound of Rey’s bike tire halting.

Rey speeds off before she has any chance to wonder why Ben Solo would be sitting alone when he’d just been surrounded by friends.

* * *

The second time Rey sees Ben over the summer, she’s working the same night shift. This time though, the newest movie has been out for weeks so there are less late night stragglers coming in to see a movie. She’s doing her normal nightly routine of counting stock when she finally notices someone at the register.

“I’m so sorry for the wait,” she rushes over. “What can I—”

There, alone once again, stands Ben Solo.

“—get you?” Rey finishes her sentence after a substantial pause.

“Hey,” he smiles at her.

“Hey,” she says back. “Watching another movie?”

Ben keeps quiet for a few seconds before saying, “Yeah, yup. Wanted another ICEE too.”

“Same thing?” Rey makes sure before she grabs the cup. “Blue?”

“Yeah,” he replies with a sheepish smile. “Thanks.”

“Popcorn?” she asks when she places the drink on the counter.

“Sure, just a small though. And no butter.”

Rey tries not to laugh. “Too much butter last time?”

“Gets too salty,” he admits. “Plus…my girlfriend’s not with me so…”

Rey tries not to think about what his girlfriend’s absence means. Instead, she offers some culinary advice. “If you like chocolate, you should put M&Ms in with the popcorn. They get warm and it’s nice to have the mix of salty and sweet. Well, unless you’re already having too much sugar.”

“I can skip the bubblegum for a few games.”

Rey can’t help but smile at the little inside joke they seem to have between them. Just days ago, they hadn’t exchanged any words between them and now they shared some cheeky little joke that only they would understand.

Eventually she watched Ben walk off with his large ICEE and small popcorn mixed with M&Ms. For the rest of the night, Rey walked around on autopilot, a small smile never leaving her face. When she went to bike home, she just barely noticed that a car was waiting for her on the loading dock side of the building. Her hand went to grab for the small knife she kept in her pocket but relaxed when she realized that it was Ben Solo sitting on the hood of his car.

“You scared me,” she tells him as she walks toward him.

“I’m sorry,” he says genuinely. “I saw you last time leaving here really late. I wanted to make sure you were safe.”

“Nothing’s happened,” Rey shrugs. “No one heads towards where I go anyways.”

“Plutt’s junkyard right?”

_Of course_ , Rey thought. _No one ever bothers to talk to me aside from Finn and Poe and Rose but everyone knows exactly where I live. Of course they know where the abandoned girl stays._ She nods.

“I…” Ben starts to stutter. Rey is in disbelief seeing _the_ Ben Solo without words. He’s always the first to raise his hand to answer a question in class, the say a joke to make everyone laugh, to gather a crowd wherever he was. But here he stood, mouth open like a fish gasping, in the dark moonlight of the late Wednesday evening.

“Are you okay?” Rey finally asks, growing concerned. She even waves a hand over his face.

“Yeah,” Ben finally comes to and shakes his head. As he speaks, he avoids looking into her eyes. “Yeah, I’m okay. I was just wondering if you wanted a ride home.”

“I…I have my bike,” she insists, grabbing a hold of the handlebars.

“I-I know,” Ben says in a rush. “I know. I just…I wanted to offer you a ride home.”

Rey can’t help herself and ask, “Why?”

Ben runs a hand through his dark, wavy hair and Rey realizes something. _He’s nervous_. _Why is he nervous?_ He finally looks straight at her and he sighs. “I don’t like the idea of you biking home so late by yourself. I know you’ve probably done this hundreds of times but…when I saw you last time, I couldn’t sleep.”

So that is how Rey finds herself sitting in the passenger seat of Ben’s Jeep with her old, salvaged bike in the back. They remain quiet during the ride, which is just a straight shot down one road for a few miles. She sits with her chin in her hand, staring outside and watches as the houses grow more scarce towards the worst part of town.

Rey wanted to refuse Ben’s offer again and again. She didn’t want his pity, his help. And she surely didn’t want him to see where she lived, even if everyone in town knew what kind of place it was. No one dared go to Plutt’s Car Shop and Junkyard unless they really had to, and certainly not at night. Even Rey’s own friends hadn’t been there before. And here she was, letting Ben Solo, _of all people_ , drive her there.

She hadn’t wanted his pity or help. But when she saw the look on his face when he admitted that he couldn’t sleep, she knew she wouldn’t be able to say no.

“Can you stop here?” Rey asked just as Plutt’s place came into view. “I just don’t need Plutt asking questions if he’s still awake.”

Ben nods and slowly stops and turn the headlights off. “I’ll stay and make sure you get into the house.”

“You don’t have to,” Rey assures him. “This is already enough.”

“Humor me,” Ben says, reaching over and placing his hand over hers. Rey snaps her head to look at him, sure that he would pull back. When he doesn’t, she looks at him questioningly.

“I….I gotta go,” she pulls her hand away and scrambles out of the car. The open trunk of Ben’s Jeep allows her to quickly get her bike and she races away before Ben could even think to jump out. Rey locks up her bike and waits for the sound of tires over gravel. When the sound slowly dies down, she finally takes a breath.

* * *

Ben is there again the following night.

And then the next night she works.

The fifth night he asks what nights she works. He tells her that he will be there to drive her home each night. At that point, he gives up the charade of coming to the theater to watch a movie.

He starts waiting in the lobby while she finishes her shift.

When she’s done, she meets Ben at the loading dock where he puts her bike in the trunk of his car. Their nightly exchange is usually silent, neither of them starting a conversation, and they always leave off with Ben grasping her hand and telling her goodnight.

This night though, as Ben readies to leave the parking lot, he asks, “Are you hungry?”

Rey, who hasn’t eaten since the peanut butter and jelly sandwich she had for lunch, says, “not really.”

Regardless, Ben turns on a different street and heads towards the close-by McDonalds. There, he orders himself a Big Mac and two large fries. When he hands her one of the containers of fries, she can’t help herself and starts to eat. She notices Ben trying to hide the smile on his face and she resists the urge to throw a fry at him.

When Rey finishes the container of fries, she sees that they’re back at the theater, parked in the large back lot where no one ever goes. Ben lounges back in his seat and starts to eat his own food.

“What happened to your strict baseball diet?” Rey finds herself asking.

His chuckle puts goosebumps on her skin. “Baseball isn’t until Spring. I have time.”

“Good. Gotta work off all those ICEEs too.”

“Are you trying to tell me that I lost my figure?”

Rey stops short and her eyes bulge. “No, I didn’t mean that, I’m sure you’re still super fit, I—”

The stupid smirk on his face makes her stop speaking, scoff loudly, and throwing her empty fry cup at him. “God, you really like embarrassing me, don’t you?”

When he finally stops laughing, he says, “No sweetheart, I just like seeing you smile.”

Before Rey could speak, he starts the car and switches to drive. “Let’s get you home.”

* * *

As the summer continued, so did their routine. Rey came to expect Ben arriving at the theater just as the doors locked, always 15 minutes after the last showtime began. He’d wait in the lobby, in full view of her in the concession stand, as she did the nightly routine of stocking up, cleaning up, and locking up. They’d drive to McDonalds and get Rey her usual large fries, and park back at the theater parking lot. Eventually it had gotten too hot to sit in the car and they started to sit on the hood of the car, like how Rey found Ben the first time.

They’d starting talking more and more. A lot about baseball, some about school. But mostly about each other.

Rey told him about her childhood; being abandoned at a fire station under the false pretense of visiting the fire station with her parents. Being shuffled around foster families until she was placed with Unkar Plutt five years ago and ended up staying. The check Plutt received from the government every month as a foster parent was enough for Plutt to give her a room, keep the fridge somewhat stocked, and use Rey as a secret mechanic to do oil changes if he had to work on something else.

Ben told her about his parents, who fought whenever they happened to be in the house together. Their time together as a family has become rarer as he grew older. The desire to please them continued, despite their deteriorating relationship. Han, his dad, was a big fan of baseball and Ben stayed with it for his dad. Yes, he was talented and yes, his goal was to go to Stanford on a baseball scholarship, but he wasn’t sure if this was what he really wanted to do with his life. He was doubtful that he’s good enough for the major leagues. He admitted that without baseball, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life.

Rey told him of her plans to study engineering at the local university, hoping to get a scholarship. If she doesn’t get a scholarship, she would attend community college first and continue working. She tells him that she wanted to move out of Plutt’s the second she turns eighteen but doesn’t have the means to live on her own, even while working full time at the movie theater with her $10.00 hourly rate. She’d have to cut back on the hours when she goes back to school so her income would not be enough for any landlord to agree to rent her a place.

One thing they don’t talk about is relationships. Ben doesn’t mention Bazine, in the past or present tense. Rey has no one to mention. They’d once mentioned Snap’s failed pick-up line, which turned the conversation awkward, leading to Ben driving Rey home immediately after but still wishing her a goodnight.

After one particularly long shift, Rey was ranting to Ben about an annoying customer who insisted she be made her own fresh batch of popcorn, said the syrup for her fountain drink was all wrong, and wished to be compensated for her long wait with a free bag of candy.

“She’s the one who demanded new popcorn,” Rey was saying heatedly, her arms waving in front of her, gesturing toward the night sky. “That popcorn machine is old as hell so it takes some time to warm up if it hasn’t been used for over an hour. You know, other theaters bag up the popcorn they don’t use and use it for the next day! At least here, the popcorn is made the same day. But no, she had to have it newly popped. Like, right in front of her. And because she waited, she wanted Sour Patch Kids? I’m so glad Maz was working and—”

The second Ben’s lips touched hers, her mind went completely blank. _What was I just talking about? Where am I? Who am I?_

A warm hand wrapped around the back of her neck and titled her mouth up and she felt Ben’s lips moving under hers. Acting under reflexes only, she started to match his movements and felt herself relaxing. He kept the kiss relatively chaste, and when he started to pull away, Rey absentmindedly tried to follow.

When she finally opened her eyes, Ben was looking down at her with an adoring look. Rey, though, thought that she must’ve looked like a deer in headlights.

“Are you okay?” he asked her softly, his fingertip grazing her skin as he swept some hair off her forehead.

“That was my first kiss,” she says in a voice she doesn’t recognize.

“Oh,” Ben looks down nervously. “I’m sorry, I—”

“It’s okay,” Rey assures him. She starts to sit up and scoots closer. “It…was perfect.”

“Yeah?” he smiles. Rey tentatively reaches for his face and traces the dimple on his cheek with her thumb. This time, she leans in first.

* * *

It’s Rey’s final shift of the summer before her senior year. After this, she would only be working three nights rather than her standard five nights, which cuts her pay by a lot but she’s still grateful that Maz agreed to schedule her three nights rather than the two nights she usually gives high school students. She can usually ask one of her coworkers if they want to give up a shift, bringing her up to four shifts, which Maz huffingly accepts when Rey tells her of the schedule change.

When the doors lock on that final night and Rey realizes that Ben hasn’t arrived, she grows concerned. Regardless, she goes through the motions of her closing procedure, and eagerly rushes out of the loading dock with her bike ready to put it in the trunk of Ben’s car.

Except his car isn’t at the loading dock. And neither is he.

Looking around, Rey realizes that none of the other cars is the Jeep that she’s grown familiar with. She wishes that she had a phone in order to call Ben or text him, just to make sure that he’s okay. There’s a multitude of reasons why he wouldn’t be able to show up to the theater to take her home.

And it’s not like he _had_ to come to the theater every night and drive her home. He didn’t _have_ to do anything. He could’ve stopped coming to the theater at any time. And he could’ve decided to stop tonight. She would not hold it against him. He didn’t owe her anything.

Even if they did spend the last few weeks of the summer making out atop, or in, his car, hands never wandering too far but far enough to try new things.

That night, Rey began to pedal home. But through watery eyes, she misjudged the distance between her and the oncoming car and pedaled into the street at the wrong time.

* * *

Rey missed the first few days of school. When she finally came in for her first day, her arm was affixed with a cast. The bike accident she had a few nights prior left her with a broken arm, a few scratches, and thankfully nothing worse. The driver had admitted that he hadn’t seen her, was driving too recklessly while completely sober, and agreed to pay for her ER and hospital visits. Rey remembered that the car that hit her was an expensive looking Falcon so she didn’t feel so bad agreeing to the driver taking over the bills that surely would’ve kept her in debt for years. Plutt didn’t leave her much of a choice either; he insisted that the driver pay for the bills, cause he sure as hell won’t, and told Rey that he’d make sure the bills were paid by the driver. At that time, Rey was under some strong pain killers and was weirdly appreciative of her foster father handling the situation.

So when she finally got to her first class, her English class, she saw her friends brighten up and run towards her to give her a huge hug.

“I gave away my shift that night,” he was telling her as he hugged her tightly. “I told Maz that I’d be back to work that night but I gave it up because I was too tired after coming back from camp. I could’ve driven you home that night.”

“Don’t worry about him,” Rey assures him. “I bike home all the time. I’m surprised it took this long for something to happen.”

“Don’t say that,” Rose chastised, playfully swiping at Rey’s good arm. “We’re just glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks.” Finally, they all take their seats in the class. “What have I missed?”

“Well, Hux and Phasma broke up, again,” Poe was leaning up on his desk and talk near Rey’s ear. “But I think they’ll get back together in a week.”

“I meant class, Poe. What have missed in class?”

“It’s the first week Rey, you haven’t missed anything,” he assures her. “Anyways, I have a theory about Hux that I’m still gathering data on.”

“Poe, no one believes that you made out with Hux at that party,” Finn whispered over to him. Rey turned her head over to Poe in disbelief.

“I may not have physical proof but it totally happened.”

“Wait, when was this?” Rey finally asked.

“It was during the party a few nights ago,” Poe replied. “Actually, the night of your accident. There was a house party. I crashed it cause it was on my street. Hux was there and it just happened.”

“No it didn’t,” Rose rolled her eyes.

“I swear to god!” Poe said too excitedly, causing everyone in the room to look at him. He waved them off to return to their own conversations. “ _It did happen._ You can even ask Solo. He saw us outside!”

“Oh,” Rey tried to sound surprised, hiding her real reaction of disappointment. “Think he’d corroborate your story?”

“I think so,” Poe says. “It was his party. I think he threw it because Bazine came back from her vacation. I heard her talking about visiting relatives in Europe. She had a terrible accent too.”

Thankfully, Ms. Holdo chose that moment to enter the classroom to begin class. “Alright everyone! Who’s ready for some Shakespeare this morning?”

* * *

Rey was running a little late getting to her next class. Her locker had given her trouble and just when she turned to head to her physics classroom, she felt the strap of her old backpack snap. Her bag dropped to the ground but thankfully, all of the contents stayed in.

Before she could reach down to pick it up, it was being picked up for her. Rey recognized the hand that wrapped around the handle of her bag. It was the one that held her as they kissed. The one she felt on the skin of her back and on the contours of her front.

She looked up at him and grabbed the non-broken strap and put it over her shoulder carefully. “Thanks,” she muttered without looking at him and moved to walk away.

“Wait.”

Rey wished she had the strength to resist turning around. But she was tired. She’d blame it on the pain meds.

Turning around, she felt a sudden déjà vu. Like the first night he waited for her outside of the theater to drive her home. He looked nervous, speechless. Rey tore her eyes away from him and looked down at her shoes.

“What happened?”

Ben’s concerned voice made Rey scoff. “I had an accident on my bike a couple nights ago.”

“Going home?”

“Yeah.”

“Rey, I’m so—”

“You’re not the one who hit me with a car,” she says icily. “What do you have to apologize for?”

When he struggles to say anything, Rey just shakes her head. “That was uncalled for. You don’t owe me anything. A ride home. An explanation. None of it. We weren’t anything. You weren’t mine to lose.”

Rey glances up when she hears the bell signaling the start of the next period. “Now I’m late for class. See you around.”

She leaves him standing in the deserted hallway, leaving him, her feelings, and their summer memories behind.


	2. in my defense, i have none

I’m doing good, I’m on some new shit

Been saying “yes” instead of “no”

I thought I saw you at the bus stop, I didn’t though

I hit the ground running each night

I hit the Sunday matinee

You know the greatest films of all time were never made

\- the 1 _ taylor swift

✨✨

“Hey kid, come out from under there. I have someone here for you to meet.”

“I swear to god Han, if it’s another guy you’re trying to set me up with...”

“Well it wasn’t my intention but now that you mention it…”

Rolling her eyes, Rey rolled out from underneath the car she was working on, some bougie ride that one of Han’s friends owned, ready to tell whoever it was that Han brought that she wasn’t interested.

But then.

She looked above her, eyes trailing up and up, to see Ben Solo’s face. A face that she hadn’t seen since high school. Was it graduation when she saw him last? Prom? Maybe even that day she walked away from him in the hallway after her accident? She couldn’t remember now.

“Rey, this is Ben.”

“We’ve met,” both Rey and Ben said simultaneously.

“Really?” Han was confused. “Oh right, you went to the same high school.”

“Yeah,” Rey confirmed, slowly getting up and wiping her hands with an equally dirty towel. “Nice to see you again.”

Rey could see Ben gulp slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “You too. I didn’t know you worked for my dad.”

“You wouldn’t know,” Rey shrugged, meaning to sound nonchalant but probably sounded a bit mean. “You went to Stanford, right?”

“I did,” Ben confirmed, looking down at his shoes. “But I’m actually going to Chandrila now. I’m moving back.”

Rey feigned interest. “Cool. Well, I gotta go back to work. Nice seeing you again.”

At that moment, the main door of the shop rang its usual shrill bell when someone entered and Han stepped away to go see who it was, leaving Ben and Rey standing in the garage. After a few seconds of silence, Rey just gave Ben a sheepish smile and turned to start working again.

“I’m sorry.”

That made Rey pause. “For what?”

“High school, that summer,” Ben started babbling. “We had a good summer together. Really good. It may have been the best summer of my life.”

“Ben,” she sighed. “That was years ago. I hope you’re not still thinking about it. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“It was,” he tells her. “It was a big deal to me. I hate that I hurt you. I think about it a lot, knowing that I hurt you like that. I’ve never been able to forget.”

Rey placed a gentle hand on Ben’s arm. “Ben. It’s fine. I’m not harboring any feelings about it anymore. We were just…dumb high schoolers. We can just move on from that and be friends, seeing as you’re probably going to be around a bit more?”

Sighing in relief, Ben ran a hand through his hair. It was longer now, Rey noticed. Weirdly lighter, maybe from all of that California sun. He was also bigger, way bigger than he’d been when they were in high school. Bigger than what she thought baseball players usually bulked up to.

“I am,” he nodded. “I…I had a bad falling out with my parents right before I went to Stanford so I never came back home for holidays. But the past four years I had, I realized that I needed to be close to them again. And that I really don’t want to play baseball.”

“Seriously? But…you had a scholarship to Stanford!”

“I hated it. The coach there, Snoke, he demanded so much of me, of the team. I was there on a partial academic scholarship too and had to maintain my grades but Snoke made that difficult. I was miserable. My parents came to visit me a couple of months ago, after I hadn’t seen them since I left and they saw how I was doing. They encouraged me to come home if I wanted to. So I decided to apply to Chandrila’s Psychology Master’s program, and I’m going to start here in the fall.”

Rey thought back to their many conversations that one summer. She remembered that Ben didn’t love baseball as much as his dad did. He had stayed with the sport in hopes to make his dad proud. She suddenly felt pity for him, someone who spent the four years of his life doing something he felt that he needed to do and suffered because of it.

“That’s…that’s really great, Ben. I’m glad you decided to choose what you wanted instead of what Han wanted.”

“Speaking of,” Ben glanced over his shoulder and gestured to where his dad had disappeared to. “How did you end up working for my dad?”

“Oh, it’s a funny story actually,” Rey started to laugh. “He had a sign out front saying he was looking for mechanics. You know I lived with Plutt so I could do a lot of basic car repairs. Anyways, I came in and asked if I could apply. He told me to change the oil in his car to see if I could do it. When I went to go do it, I realized that that was the car that hit me.”

“Wait…what?” Ben asked confusedly.

“Your dad was the one who hit me that night,” Rey said, still laughing. “Crazy world, huh?”

“Rey, what the fuck? It was my dad? I’m going to kill him.”

Once again, Rey put a hand on Ben’s arm and it calmed him down immediately. “He paid for all of my hospital bills. Plutt would’ve made me work until I was dead if he was left with all that to pay. And it was just my arm, it wasn’t that big of a deal. But it was funny as hell to change the oil and turn around and ask him if he’d hit anyone else with the car lately. I swear, he turned white.”

Once Rey caught her breath from laughing, she looked up at Ben who was giving her a strange look. “So you’re telling me that you’re working for the guy who hit you with his car?”

“Dammit kid, why did you have to go and tell him that?”

The two quickly turned towards Han’s voice and stomps as he approached. He was being followed by a man wearing a cape. _A cape._

“Uncle Lando,” Ben greeted the unknown man. Rey watched as Ben hugged the caped man.

“My boy, it’s been so long,” Lando smiled at him. “What’s this I hear about Han hitting something with a car?”

Ben turned to his dad. “You never told me you hit someone with a car!”

Han held his hands up in defense. “I told your mother and we got everything settled! What was I supposed to do? You spent all of your time with that girlfriend of yours anyways, it’s not like it ever came up!”

At the mention of his girlfriend, Rey noticed that Ben froze for a second. He did recover easily though and said, “You’re the one who always complained about _my_ driving. Little did I know that you ran into my…friend.”

Rey didn’t miss how Han’s lips turned up at one side, giving his signature smirk that she knew probably got him into trouble a lot.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Han said. “Ben, I _did_ accidentally clip Rey when she was on her bike. I made sure she was okay, I made sure that all of her hospital bills were sent to me. Hell, I even had to deal with that terrible foster father of hers. Guy tried to scam more money out of me! Said that he had all these outstanding hospital bills, but I knew he was lying. I made sure to call the billing department and ensure everything was paid. When Rey showed up and asked for a job and told me who she was, I gave it to her immediately. I apologized almost every day for a month when she started working here but she told me she’d throw a wrench at my head if I didn’t stop.”

When Ben turned to her, she shrugged. “It’s true. He gave me a job even though I had no experience, just some tinkering around in the junk yard. I couldn’t work at the theater forever. This job helped me get away from Plutt and go to college.”

“This is just…unbelievable,” Ben finally cracked a smile. “All this time…”

Rey moved to turn back to working on the car. In a teasing voice, she said, “Maybe it was a good thing you didn’t pick me up that night.”

The room turned silent except for the air conditioning that was blasting in the garage. Rey closed her eyes and muttered a curse under her breath.

“Huh,” Han had a shit eating grin on his face when Rey turned back around. “So…you two were…you know what? You guys should probably talk somewhere else. Rey, you’re off the clock now. Go wash up and change and Ben will take you out to eat at that burger place you really like. Lando, Rey will get your car done tomorrow.”

“But—I need it---”

Han ushered Lando out of the garage roughly. The sound of the metal door echoed through the workspace, reverberating through Rey’s bones.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that,” Rey sighed. “It was just a joke. I swear, I don’t hold it against you.”

Ben took a second to look at her deeply before speaking. “Go get changed. I’ll meet you outside. I’m guessing my dad was talking about that burger place across the street?”

Rey nodded before heading off towards the back. In ten minutes, she had her hands and face washed, her overalls changed for her normal clothes, and possibly spent a few minutes on her hair until she gave up, knowing it wouldn’t look any more impressive.

They sat down and ordered at the burger place. They avoided looking at each other when the server left with their drink and food orders until Ben finally spoke up.

“I know that it probably doesn’t mean anything now, but I really am sorry about not coming to see you that night,” he began. “I know you probably don’t even think about that night, about what I did, but believe me, Rey, I didn’t forgive myself for what I did.”

“Ben, you couldn’t have known that a car would—”

“It’s not just that,” he insisted. “I mean, if I had been there to drive you home, the accident wouldn’t have happened. I mean about Bazine.”

Although Rey didn’t hold the accident against Ben, she does remember the many nights after that she asked herself why she’d let herself get too close to someone who had a girlfriend. Why she didn’t ask questions. Why she had let him in so easily that it made breaking her hard that much easier. Until she finally realized that she couldn’t continue beating herself up for having had a crush on Ben Solo. For spending the summer with him, even if it turned out to be for nothing.

Still, though, when Bazine’s name would come up in casual conversations with Poe, Finn, and Rose during any of their Friday or Saturday night hangouts, Rey felt a little jealousy. And regret. Rey was the one who had had a _thing_ with Bazine’s boyfriend, but she couldn’t help but think that she’d been the one to lose, even if he’d never been hers.

“We don’t really need to bring this back up,” Rey finally said. “It’s in the past. We should just laugh about it.”

“Please,” Ben reached out to hold Rey’s hand. “I want you to know the truth so you don’t think that it was about you. I know you don’t care, I know it doesn’t matter now, but I just want you to know that Bazine broke up with me before she went on vacation. I wasn’t with her the entire time we were…that summer. She came back and pretended that she hadn’t broken up with me, invited all those people to my house, and I just…played along. I was trying to maintain some stupid image that of course doesn’t matter in the long run.”

Though Rey had put this all behind her, she was relieved to know that she hadn’t been pursuing a relationship with someone who had a girlfriend. At least that was one thing she knew she hadn’t done wrong.

“I believe you,” Rey told him sincerely. “You didn’t owe me anything then and you don’t owe me anything now. But I appreciate you telling me.”

Rey forgot that her hand was still in Ben’s until he ran his thumb over her knuckles. She tried to ignore the flutter in her stomach when he smiled at her. “So what have you been up to other than working at the shop?”

Rey went on to tell Ben about how she’d managed to leave Plutt’s when she turned eighteen, even though she had no money and no means to find a place to live or get a job. She described spending most of her time at school or working at the theater where Maz let her stay most nights. Her story continued past her starting to work for Han, how Han had pulled some strings at an apartment complex to get her a place to live. How she’d started going to college two years after high school when she could comfortably go to school without living paycheck to paycheck.

She’d glanced over the brief relationships she had, none of which lasted very long because she was either too busy or they’d never really felt anything too strongly. She failed to mention that the only person she’d ever felt anything for was him.

Ben told Rey about how his relationship with Bazine ended just weeks after he’d moved to Stanford and she’d moved to New York. This time, Ben was the one to end things with finality. He would also yadda yadda over the girlfriends or dates he’d had the past four years and Rey was grateful for that. She didn’t really want to know about any other girls, even if she was over everything that happened between them.

After a few hours and multiple desserts and a waitress change, Ben took Rey’s hand again, this time flipping it over to its palm faced up. He trailed his finger across her skin and she was transported to that first night he’d touched her.

His hands holding her as he gave her her first kiss. Her second. Her third.

His hands grazing over her the skin on her back, her breasts, keeping them above her waistline when she’d admitted she wasn’t ready.

Rey was pulled back to reality when Ben tangled his fingers between hers. Looking up, she noticed his sweet smile.

“We were something, weren’t we?” he asked, eyes boring into hers again.

She matched his smile. “We were. It would’ve been fun if you’d been the one.”


End file.
